Casper the Commuting Cat: The True Story of the Cat Who Rode the Bus and Stole Our Hearts (15 page)

Kuzya was by no means the widest travelling moggy, although he did seem to do it all by paw, unlike a kitty called Clyde from Tasmania in Australia. Clyde had been given to a little girl for her birthday, but had wandered off one day. The family got another cat, which unfortunately was run over. They decided they were unlucky and pets weren’t for them – until three years later, when they received a call from a vet in mainland Australia 2,500 miles away. Clyde had been found by a local nurse five months earlier when he’d wandered into a local hospital. She’d taken him home, but when she was moving house, she went to the vet to see if he could be re-homed. The vet discovered he had been chipped and could be returned to his original family. It seems likely that Clyde must have done some of his travelling by car or van, as it was such a long trip – and he made the return trip home by plane.

The capacity of cats to survive is unbelievable. One that was locked in a Cadillac by accident ended up being shipped from the US to Australia. The cat managed to survive for fifty-two days without any food, simply by licking engine grease and eventually eating the car’s instruction manual. I suppose that those were the only options available to the poor little thing.

Other cats have also had no choice but the most awful of options. A few years ago, a woman in California started to feed a group of feral cats near where she worked. They got to know her, and often ran to see what treats she had for them. Over time she started to distinguish one from the other and identify the various characters. She became concerned about one when she realized his whiskers had disappeared – they looked as if they had been burned off. When she investigated further, she noted that there was a big chunk missing from the fur on his rear leg, almost as if it had been bitten off.

The next morning, this young black and white male was in an even worse state. His entire left paw was missing. The lady contacted a pet rescue service and, together, they worked out what was happening. This little soul was gnawing off parts of his body that had been injured. He was slowly dying, even though he was trying to save himself the only way he knew how It was vital that he was captured and helped.

Every day he came to breakfast and managed to evade capture with the help of his mother, who would stand guard as he ate breakfast. The infection would surely kill him He had chewed at his feet so much that the front left leg was gnawed off almost to the shoulder, and the right rear leg to the knee. The fact that he was still eating and still trying to save himself was testament to an incredible survival instinct.

Finally, by following the cat, who was by now being called ‘Stubbs’, and his mum to where they slept, and with the judicious use of some Kentucky fried chicken as bait, they managed to capture him, take him to hospital and treat the injuries. It transpired that someone had set fire to him in a hideous act of cruelty. All four of his feet and lower back legs were terribly burned – so much so that the pain of gnawing them off had been more bearable than leaving them alone. Eventually, even with help, he did lose a back leg up to the knee, a front one to the elbow and a toe from the front, but his amazing will to live, a great deal of medical care and a new home meant that there was a happy ending.

These extraordinary stories show how determined and brave cats are. Casper was only one of many, and I’m sure there are hundreds of others with similar tales. What I was quickly discovering was that his adventures were making people open up about the many wonderful creatures who had shared their lives too.

One lady from Edinburgh wrote to me to say that, some years ago, she had got two little kittens from a rescue centre. She named them Harry and Maisie, and became very fond of them as they grew The two were completely different characters, despite being siblings. While Harry liked nothing better than to sit by the fire or on this lady’s lap, Maisie was never one to enjoy cuddles and seemed to come home only for food, sometimes disappearing for days on end.

The woman and her husband were planning to move house, and about a week before they left, she decided to prevent Maisie from going out. The cat was going walkabout for such long periods that it was possible she wouldn’t be back in time for the move if she got out. After three or four days, there was a knock at the door. Standing there was a burly man, who asked whether Maisie was at home. The lady had closed the door behind her to stop the cat from escaping and was rather bewildered by this request.

‘How do you know my cat?’ she said.

‘Everyone knows your cat,’ he replied.

It transpired that the man worked in a haulage business nearby and went on trips across Britain (Chris laughed when I told him this story). Maisie had been going with him on many of these journeys since she was a little kitten. Although she had popped into the cabs of other drivers, this man was her favourite. He’d become worried when she hadn’t turned up for a few days. He’d been on a trip to Nottingham and had fully expected Maisie to accompany him.

When the lady told the man they were moving, he seemed terribly upset. Maisie had been his little companion for so long and he would miss her. She wondered whether she could bear to leave Maisie behind, but she loved her too, and Harry would feel strange without his sister.

Once they moved to a rural area of Scotland, Maisie never wandered again. She settled into her new environment and became a hunter rather than a traveller. I teased Chris and said that I hoped he wasn’t being unfaithful to our cats by taking others on trips when he was working.

Cats are such individuals and they are so good at finding their way into our hearts that I don’t think I’ll ever be surprised by any feline adventure story I hear. They are courageous and wise, brave and sometimes foolish, warm and caring, but always, always their own masters. There was a part of me that hoped Casper’s notoriety would keep him safe so I could breathe a little easier than I had in the past.

The road had always been my greatest fear. Although Tuppence and Peanut were very good and tended to stick to the gardens when they did go out, Casper was different. Despite speed bumps being put in place, they didn’t seem to make any difference on Poole Park Road and cars drove along at a terrible rate. There were buses every ten minutes or so, and those were obviously Casper’s main interest. Every time I heard an engine, I’d worry.

After Casper’s story hit the headlines, my worry was tempered a little. Now that so many people knew about him and his antics, they were watching out for him I fervently hoped that this would prompt them to drive carefully along the road just in case ‘that cat’ was on his travels.

After his brush with fame, I started to watch Casper more closely to try to build up a picture of what he got up to, but apart from his bus travels, he didn’t go that far. When he wasn’t in the bus shelter or on the bus, he spent most of his time in the garden watching the world go by. However, his obsession with vehicles was showing no sign of abating and I worried that he would go off in a van or a car given half the chance.

One morning in mid-November, one of the smaller buses on our local route broke down opposite the house. This wasn’t one of the First vehicles that Casper loved so much, but I was worried that he would take too much of an interest in it. Immediately, I sensed there could be trouble. Casper was so nosy that he got up from his watching spot straight away and went over to the shelter. I kept an eye on him for a while, just to make sure he was still there. He was sitting perfectly still with the driver, who must have been waiting for assistance.

After a little while, two breakdown trucks came and I thought to myself,
here comes trouble.
I kept trying to coax him back with his favourite turkey roll, but it had no appeal compared to the motor show he was watching from the bus shelter. Eventually, after I’d been swinging slices of the stuff around for ages, he ambled across as if he was doing me an enormous favour. I closed the door quickly behind him and determined to keep him in until everyone had left.

Somehow – and I was never quite sure how Casper achieved this so frequently – he managed to escape. He must have got out the back, as the front exit and windows were completely sealed, but there was nothing I could do because, by the time I noticed he’d gone, the broken-down bus had been towed away, the breakdown trucks were gone and Casper wasn’t waiting at the bus stop.

I started to panic as the day wore on and there was no sign of him trotting home. ‘Where are you, Casper?’ I kept asking, even though there was no one to hear me. I started to worry that he had gone off in one of the vehicles. Remembering that the broken-down bus had belonged to a company called Target, I got the number of their head office in Cornwall and asked for help.

‘Please,’ I begged, ‘please can you keep a lookout for my cat?’ I told them what he was like, how much he loved cars, lorries, buses, anything, and described to them the scene earlier when he had been so intent on watching the breakdown people. I asked if they could ask anyone who might have been there that day, and they suggested that I email a photo so that if he did turn up in the yard they would know it was Casper.

The afternoon turned into evening and still there was no sign of him I started to wonder if he had got on a First bus and become confused, so I rang Rob in customer services, as he had always been so helpful. I was frantic by the time I asked him to please put out another notice asking the drivers to be alert for Cassie. He couldn’t have been more obliging and typed up the poster as we talked.

Nothing happened and I spent the whole evening running between the front and back doors, calling his name, desperate to hear his little collar tinkle. By midnight, I was exhausted and knew that I had to go to bed. I suspected that he was well and truly lost, but there was nothing I could do in the dark and I would need my strength come daylight, when I would search for him until I could walk no more.

I opened the front door one last time and there he was. I cuddled him, scolded him, kissed him – every emotion was swirling around in relief that he was finally home. He seemed exhausted and I noticed that his pads were burning hot. ‘Oh Casper,’ I cried, ‘what’s happened to you, my darling?’

I’d always been so worried that something awful would occur and now it looked as if it had. When I took him into the light, I could see that his pads were bright red and all I could think was that he had indeed got on the broken-down bus or one of the breakdown trucks and then was spooked. Perhaps he realized that he was on an unfamiliar route or got a fright at some point, but I think he must have got off somewhere he didn’t recognize and then spent the day walking home.

Usually when he came back, he went straight for something to eat, but this time he flaked out on the floor as if he couldn’t move a muscle. He was flat out as I brought some food to him He struggled to lift his head so that he could eat lying down, but he was so weak that he could barely do even that.

It was a terribly close incident; it was only his amazing homing instinct that had brought Casper back to me. He remained tired for a while, and though his pads recovered, he seemed reluctant to go out for a few days.

His tendency to go walkabout remained undiminished, however. On another occasion, one of the First drivers asked me when I was going to work whether Casper had got home all right the day before. I said he had, but what had made him ask? ‘Well,’ he said, ‘he got on as usual but someone must have scared him or thrown him off the seat, because he got off at a stop that wasn’t one of his usual ones.’

He got home in one piece then but I was starting to feel as if every time Casper went out that might be the last time I’d see him There was a constant fear that he would jump in a delivery van and the driver would unwittingly take him away without even knowing he was there.

I tried so hard to discourage him from crossing the road, but how can you stop an animal who has his independence? I don’t know what his life was like before we got him, but perhaps he was always on roads. Cats are so free spirited; our fears may just be the price we have to pay for their companionship. I’d have to lock Casper in and tie him up to stop him from going out – and, believe me, I’ve been tempted.

Casper broke the cat flap twice; he completely smashed it while I was at work I got home to find a scene of mayhem and a missing cat, which proved to me how determined he was when he put his mind to things. It was as if he couldn’t bear to be a prisoner. Given that he was so light-footed, there were times when he managed to sneak past me without me having the slightest notion that he had done so. I’d be sitting quite happily on the sofa, thinking how well I’d done to keep Casper in that day, when he’d stroll in without a care in the world, his dirty fur and hunger proving that he had been out all day when I’d thought he was upstairs sleeping like a good boy.

One summer, when it felt as if the traffic on the road outside was even faster than usual, I decided to make a concerted effort to keep him in. However, it was so hot that I needed to open windows to let some air in. What was I going to do?

The stuffiest room seemed to be our bedroom. I thought that if I could get a little breeze in there during the day, Chris and I might have a better chance of sleeping at night. I went to the garden centre and got some pieces of trellis that I rigged up so the windows could be opened but Casper couldn’t get near the small part that I worried he would squeeze through. I should have known he would see it as a challenge not a barrier. By the end of the first day, he had wiggled his way through somehow, jumped out of the window and onto the roof, leaped down onto the dustbins below and trotted across the road.